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broken pixel posted:Days later edit: Oh poo poo, I forgot one from early this year!!! I changed it. Everyone's lists are cool. Please post more lists! Help Im Alive posted:#2 - The House in Fata Morgana
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Dec 16, 2022 00:10
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Insanely good game year for me. Maybe the best ever. 10. Loop Hero Making its opening aesthetic appeal to me with this track, I knew we were destined to be homies. The game is fun, with constant cute little surprises to be found in the way the map transforms with experimentation, but art direction is the real triumph here. Hope these devs are making out alright in hard times under the Tsar.   9. Norco Again, here we have a game that leads with music and art. The writing, to boot, is successfully sardonic, tragic, and campy. I know these story-heavy, downright literary experiments in interactivity remain a niche pursuit, but I can’t help but feel that they’re doing more for the medium than most, and their influence will win out, in time.   8. The Pathless Giant Squid strips down the over-produced action-adventure model to just a whisper of puzzle design strewn across a vast island, with some scene-setting boss fights laid on like a garnish. I just love their style, even better honed since Abzu. The spirit of Team Ico is alive and well.    7. Triangle Strategy I have a crippling weakness for SRPGs to the point that I’ll forgive a lot of narrative and mechanical transgressions if I can just move some dudes on some squares. Thankfully, Triangle Strategy did not force me to debase myself, as it’s superlative in just about every way that counts. It’s got an incredible interface that cleanly delivers a LOT of information without confusion, a gorgeous aesthetic, and some of the greatest tactics levels ever made. Even with an enormous host of unique characters with which to form your party, every one I worked with managed to shine in their own way. A can’t-miss work for grid enthusiasts.  6. Inscryption I’m not even sure how much the heralded meta-textual elements play into my adoration of Inscryption; I just love the card game. It’s innovative and enjoyable throughout, with twists that practically feel like expansions. The understated music is also a major highlight.  5. Dark Souls III The Curse-Rotted Greatwood. The Abyss Watchers. Aldrich, Devourer of Gods. Dancer of the Boreal Valley. The Twin Princes of Lothric. You ever think about how most games dream of having ONE boss that clings to memory in the way DS3 has a legion of them? And that is to say nothing of the Lothric Knights that haunt my sleep. This was the second game of my From renaissance year, and boy howdy, I cannot believe I had never picked this up until recently.  4. Citizen Sleeper My favorite storytelling of the year. Citizen Sleeper has a simple yet expansive implementation of dice-rolling to govern the lived experience of an android adrift on a corrupt space station. In every chapter, mostly just through text (and some gorgeous character drawings), you are made to feel the tangible and emotional impact of the choices you make as you search for meaning and purpose in a society that mostly wants you gone. And again, as with anything on this list, what music!  3. Elden Ring I’m currently smack-dab in the middle of this but the superiority of this work is readily apparent. It easily brings to mind touchstones of the medium like Diablo II and Ocarina of Time, landing on our doorsteps like a fuckin’ meteor after we kill Radahn. I could see myself playing this for two more years, delicately peeling back its mysteries and its diversity of playstyles. It is a game that understands the appeal of the open world concept with rare lucidity, that it is not a checklist in topographical form but a tool for evoking the exhilaration of exploration and discovery. Also, very importantly, I think it has the best execution of From’s brand of NPC interactions and storylines that they’ve made. See you on next year’s list, probably.   2. Radiohead: Kid Amnesiac Exhibition A minimalist work that demonstrates how wasteful we’ve been with this medium. Yeah, it helps to have music by the greatest band on the planet Earth and evocative art everywhere you look, but the little psychedelic tricks they pull in every corner of this gallery are routinely awesome.  1. Bloodborne The true original, the enduring masterpiece of the From catalog. My approach to to Bloodborne was reluctant and distrustful. Its lust for my death felt repugnant and unjust. Was I to waste my days off an errant wanderer of Central Yarnham for all time? Where was the showmanship? Where was the fun? Was Father Gascoigne even mortal? Questions typical of a hunter who did not understand his charge. Soon, I grasped what it meant to thirst for blood and violence, to gaze deeper into the maw of madness, to realize that my nightmares have their own nightmares. It’s hard to narrow down all that’s memorable, from small touches (piles of snakes hiding in tall grass) to unrivaled presentation (the Blood-Starved Beast stalking toward you from far away). I can’t leave without mentioning that Castle Cainhurst is likely my favorite level of any game I’ve played, capped off by Bloodborne’s best boss and a denouement of an uneasy rendezvous with pure evil. Late to the party, but does anyone have more blood to spare?
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Dec 16, 2022 00:15
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Venuz Patrol posted:The list: There's like 3 games on here i've never heard of that look interesting, thanks for the recs!
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Dec 16, 2022 00:22
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Lisztless posted:
Kull the Conqueror posted:
Folks, you love to see it.
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Dec 16, 2022 00:43
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Passing by to threadshit my best of list as I continue to lose my grip on video game coordination and any semblance of free time. 8. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond My partner bought me this as an anniversary gift and I never felt closer to  ing. I didn’t like Pokémon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire as a remake but that looks like a masterpiece compared to this. Ugly and lazy? Pick a struggle. 7. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Kalimari Desert you will always be famous!!  6. Elden Ring A low entry for the obvious GOTY winner but points are points. I’ve always struggled to get into FromSoftware games. Mostly because I’m terrible at video games, but I never found a purpose that would feel rewarding by the end. Elden Ring’s world opened it up to me. It truly felt like there was lore in every corner that implored me to explore. I haven’t beat it and probably never will so this was definitely my most watched game this year.  5. Clue: Murder at Boddy Mansion Is this a 1998 CD-ROM from a cereal box on my list in the year of our lord 2022? Played this through the magic of  and it brought back so much nostalgia. My avatar comes from the Wikipedia article for this game because it’s the most funny out of context sentence. The noir atmosphere in this game is unmatched and the uncanny cutscenes really add to the unsettling vibe. No other shovelware has ever reached the high highs as this one. 4. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel I haven’t dipped my toe into this franchise since 2010. Returning after twelve years and an extensive overhaul of the game was jarring, to say the least. I’m still not sure I understand what a pendulum summon is? They were just making poo poo up for whatever season that was. But according to my Switch Year in Review this was my most played game. Most of that time was spent using a Crystal Beast deck straight from 2010 because I’m so inherently anti-meta. Master Duel feels like an ongoing game done right. It’s a fair trade for in-game vs. real currency, drops more events than I can keep up with and ultimately treats everybody with respect, whether it be a veteran or newbie.  3. Disco Elysium It’s a shame about *gestures at everything regarding the ZA/UM situation* but this is my comfort game. A game that I can go long stretches without playing but when I return to Revachol it’s like I never left the wind-whipped cobblestone streets.  2. Pokemon Violet I know I don’t have much time for video games anymore when we’re a month into a Pokemon release and I still haven’t finished the game. I’ll reserve my final judgments for next year’s list when it’s done and I dive into competitive play but it’s the best mainline game since Gen 5. Open world is the way to go and I loved the new selection of ‘mons. As for the performance? I played Skyrim for PS3 at launch so I've seen some real poo poo.  1. Pokemon Legends: Arceus Exactly a year ago I had zero interest in this spinoff because it looked bad. I was very wrong. This is exactly the Pokemon evolution I was looking for. Leaving the starting town and the immediate fear seeing a gigantic level 40 Rapidash is like nothing I’ve experienced in a Pokemon game before. It felt like an actual challenge. I scoured over every corner of this (mostly empty) world fighting for my life but I had so much fun doing so. Best of all is the emphasis on capture. Completing a Pokedex has long lost its compelling nature but alpha species and achievements gave me good reason to do so. If this game had more trainer battles and something resembling gyms it might be my favourite Pokemon game ever.
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Dec 16, 2022 01:18
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I started making my list for this year and realised I've played basically nothing in the 2nd half of the year because I kept going "oh, I should finish my backlog before starting new games" and then I never finished my backlog. I've got like 2 weeks to see if I can finish off some stuff and fill out an actual top 10.
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Dec 16, 2022 04:09
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House in Fata Morgana is fantastic, a definite must play for VN fans
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Dec 16, 2022 04:38
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Most of my year was spent replaying every Ace Attorney game in order to stream them over discord, and also Monster Prom. And wishing Gundam Evo wasn't as mismanaged as it was. I will say, I'm definitely ranking Elden Ring over Monster Camp
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Dec 16, 2022 04:50
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Honorable Mentions: Warzone 2, Population: ONE, FarCry 5, Batman: Arkham City Unpleasantly Surprised: Darktide 10. Thymesia I played three AA Soulsborne riffs this year. Thymesia, Steelrising, and Soulstice. I beat the former two, and fell off of the third. Of the three, Thymesia was the one that had the clearest, most successful take on its inspiration, despite Steelrising having a much more cohesive and interesting aesthetic and setting. Thymesia is basically Bloodborne with a clever mechanic tacked on. Your normal attacks inflict low damage and mark ever-increasing parts of the enemy health bar. These “wounds” can be consumed to convert them into real, permanent damage on the enemy by using a special claw attack to detonate them. Combat was fast-paced and you could tell they were trying to make it as satisfyingly close to Bloodborne as they could get. After beating it, my only real concern was that there just wasn’t that much of it there. With only 5 real bosses, I was left wishing they’d had enough manpower to add 2 more levels and a boss or two in each. But what is there, I can wholeheartedly recommend to any fan of Bloodborne. 9. Walkabout Minigolf Still the high watermark for passionate, fun, accessible VR. It is the first VR title I recommend to anyone new to the ecosystem, no matter who they are or what their interests (yes, even over Alyx and Beat Saber). The artstyle and gameplay just work. I cannot overstate how charming and enjoyable every aspect of it is, or how perfect a simple night minigolfing with friends while giving each other poo poo for missing shots is. I will buy every DLC course Mighty Coconut ever makes, and I will shill this game to anyone who will listen. I don’t expect it to leave my top ten in the next five years. It has a loving Labyrinth course. Yes, the David Bowie movie with the goblins and poo poo. If you have a VR headset you really have no excuse for not owning this one, and I must insist you buy it. 8. Holocure: Save the Fans It’s Hololive Vampire Survivors, except it has strafing which makes it way less clunky to play than VS, and it's free! The sheer number of references to Hololive crammed into this passion project combined with the smoothness of strafing and controller input basically ensured I would never touch VS again, despite the latter also consuming over 14 hours from me this year. You can play as Sakura Miko this game is ELITE AS gently caress 7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II As frustrating as Activision's treatment of the standard multiplayer in this is, as infuriating as the loving CONSTANT crashing was in the two weeks following launch, and as much of a clear beta the game was when it shipped... nobody does shooting like Call of Duty. Hell, nobody even really gets close. Bungie and Respawn give it a good effort, but they're still at least a point and a half lower on a ten point scale. CoD is king, and when it works, it's some of the most fun I have these days. The campaign is excellent, with a great addition to the cast in Alejandro, and a wide variety of missions that are rarely simple ground-based shooting galleries. Surprisingly creative, and I get the feeling it was not an afterthought, despite how the devs must know a minority of purchases ever even boot the campaign up. 6. Case of the Golden Idol You remember Obra Dinn, right? Well, that guy isn't going to just make Return of the Obra Dinn 2, or even any more games like it. Probably ever. That's just not his style. But it's cool, because we've got Case of the Golden Idol at home. That's a mean way to start off, but it really is a fun deductive puzzler in the same vein as Obra Dinn. You get to view chapters of an ongoing story told through the years, and based on what you inspect, construct a sequence of events and a list of identities for the people present. I had quite an enjoyable time figuring out what happened in each chapter, and challenging my baseline assumptions whenever my initial guesses turned out to be wrong. 5. Ai the Somnium Files: NirvanA Initiative The first one was good, but not what I'd call great. I'm a fan of Uchikoshi Kotaro, but Ai1 didn't have quite the same production values that 999 or Virtue's Last Reward did. Well, the sequel steps it up in pretty much every way. The mystery and antagonist are more intriguing, Gen, Kizuna, Lien and the new AI ball companion Tama are fantastic additions to a beloved cast, and most importantly the Somnium sequences are a little less inscrutable. Not always, but I thought they were way less dependent on randomly lucking into the correct choice this time around. Anyway, if you liked the first one, this one's a slam dunk. Mizuki is a more fun main character than Date - and Date was already pretty great - and I'd be happy to play another installment if they want to make more. 4. Blaston I really felt like this one needed to be this high. Blaston is the clearest-cut example of a gaming tragedy I can think of. It's a great concept, it's executed well, and it charged a fair price (it was in a humble bundle as well for pennies, basically). Blaston is a game where you can select a loadout of various guns and fight matches where each participant is standing on a 4'x4' platform. The goal of Blaston is to use these guns to shoot your opponent and reduce their HP to zero before yours, in two of three rounds to win a match. The bullets in blaston are energy balls that move at varying speeds, but the key to the whole thing is that they're all dodgeable. In fact, the goal is to balance your ability to dodge with your ability to fire patterns of hard to dodge bullets and lasers of different arcs and trajectories. Most of the guns are nicely balanced, and your ability to combine them in ways that create what are basically traps and inescapable zones of doom for the enemy is key to achieving victory over strong players. So what's the problem? Blaston is a VR game. At any given time, there are less than 5 people playing it. I've spent more time stuck in a queue, desperately hoping a player - any player - eventually pops up to fight me, than is reasonable. Blaston deserves to have caught on. It's a game that demands you turn, dodge, duck and contort your body in all sorts of ways to avoid being hit while desperately grabbing for the next respawning gun so you can retaliate and force your opponent to literally sweat while avoiding your own barrage (seriously, this game is only slightly less high intensity than Thrill of the Fight in terms of how hard you will have to physically work to play it well). Hard-fought matches in Blaston have been some of the most fun I've had in games - VR or otherwise - in the past few years. I truly hope it goes free to play at some point and attains the playerbase it deserves. Because it deserves to be played. edit: Holy poo poo it just went free to play today. Coincidence? I gotta pick it back up and see if there's players! 3. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice My game of the year from...whatever year it released. I am more certain now than ever that Sekiro is From Software's magnum opus. Before, I probably would've said Bloodborne with The Old Hunters DLC was as good or better, but now I'm solidly a Sekiro guy. Back then I described it as an evolution on the Soulsborne style of combat that demanded more of players than just pressing the same button right as an attack was about to land in order to have an effective defense. I still believe that, but replaying the game I was able to somehow enjoy it even more than the first time around. Sekiro has so little fat on its bones. There's no worthless content, and the prosthetics all have a chance to shine if you want them to. The first time around, I think I stuck to the axe, and maybe the charged flame vent towards the end. This time, I knew what everything did, and I used a much wider variety of tools. I figured this time around, I'd do the bosses I missed the first time around (Isshin Ashina, Owl Father). They were great, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that From added boss gauntlets sometime after launch, at the end of which are super "inner" versions of three of the best bosses in the game. These inner versions are amped-up forms of Genichiro, Owl Father, and Sword Saint Isshin with new moves added to their repertoire. Just fantastic. Owl Father beat my rear end repeatedly and defeating him was thoroughly satisfying. I would play another From game with the Sekiro system with much glee. 2. Neon White I really only tried it by chance, on the Steam Next Fest from a year ago. It's so weird, because I have so many games on my backlog that just the idea of trying demos for unreleased indies sounds stupid as hell. But I tried Neon White, and added it to my wishlist right after. I make fun of the dopey losers who participate in speedrunning events a lot, because they're autistic and often visibly grotesque. Somehow this poo poo always comes back to me though, and sure enough I was replaying some levels 10, 20, 30, sometimes more times just to shave a few seconds, or a second, or a fraction of a second off my fastest clear for a hope at a better medal, or even just a better leaderboard placement. For a bit, my overall ranking for the game was 90th in the world, and I managed as high as #14 for one of the levels. I tried to execute what I thought were as many optimal or near-optimal pathings as possible. Most of the time my strategy was not the most optimal, but the joy of figuring it out on my own and then seeing how fast I could perform it was my second favorite gaming experience of 2022. Jesus loving christ were the stupid cats and dialogue awful, though. Just skip the lot of it and stick to the gameplay. 1. Elden Ring It's not the best or even the second best thing From Software has ever made. It leans on the Soulsborne style of combat to the breaking point, making me think they really have exhausted the possibilities for fair and interesting fights and maybe even trod into unfair or bullshit territory. I was actually going to list more of its flaws and then caught myself thinking how bored I was criticizing this game, and how eager I was to start talking about just how much I loved my time with it. How I didn't want it to end, and as I could sense the end approaching, took a 20 hour detour just to put up my summon sign and help others with Malenia while constantly switching builds and trying the many cool weapons and spells I had acquired. How that first encounter with Agheel in the swamp was probably one of the five all time coolest and most epic moments in all of videogames for me. How I think it's probably the most important game of the past five years in terms of what it meant to the game industry and the sheer scope of what was accomplished. I haven't had an experience with a game like this since Skyrim (greatly underselling it here because Elden Ring is much more accomplished in this regard), and I had naturally assumed I would never have it again. The concept of a game where you could talk with your friends and share anecdotes, with your adventures taking totally different paths is impossible to spawn intentionally in a way that still feels organic. The best a developer can do is give as few breadcrumbs between points of interest as possible, and be totally hands-off with influencing the player directly. But that seems to be anathema to modern game design, with its handholdy tutorials, maps littered with icons, and quests telling you exactly where to go at every step. Talking to my friends who had gone straight up the road to the castle while I had gone south and found an entirely different area with its own rabbithole to fall down had me so giddy about their reactions when they finally wandered to where I had been, and equally so when I found my way to the path they had taken. The level design isn't always perfect, but there is plenty in it where you can tell love and passion were poured. Stormveil Castle stands shoulder to shoulder with the best locations From or any developer has ever built, and it's not alone. Honestly, the world itself is one of if not the most important characters in the game. I cant remember the last time a game urged me on so strongly to see what was behind the next corner like this. The number of times I looked in the distance and saw something captivating, and set out to find a way to get there... the number of hidden nooks and paths that ultimately led to something incredible was phenomenal. Even if they didn't, I could not stop exploring because there was just so goddamn much to find. It's hard to concisely communicate this feeling, because it's literally a sense of wonder that games don't have for me anymore. The internet and the proliferation of information and datamining destroyed the innocence I had when it came to gaming worlds and secrets. Everything is written down somewhere; everything is laid bare for anyone who wants to look in the computer files, and all of that stuff had to be created by a real person somewhere, who spent time creating it, placing it, hiding it. You cant buy the kind of mystique that Elden Ring has. Not in the modern day. You can only make it yourself, or hope someone else does, and when it comes along you appreciate it. Elden Ring is a true gaming zeitgeist. It dominated the discourse for the majority of the year, and rightly so. Its reach extended into gaming spheres that haven't and wouldn't have ever touched a Souls game, whether because the overstated difficulty had reached mythical status, or because the obtuse communication of their stories did not even attempt to confine themselves to traditional narratives, and it grabbed hold. People were so intrigued to discover for themselves the denizens, mysteries, and artifacts hidden in the Lands Between that they discarded their apprehension and just dove in. We will be feeling the reverberations of this game's effect on the industry for at least the next decade. Every open world from now on will be measured against Elden Ring, praying to stand even half as tall. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Darke GBF fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Dec 16, 2022 |
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Dec 16, 2022 04:56
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Darke GBF posted:7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II/Warzone 2 These are two separate games! Please decide which one you want me to give the points to (or you could put the other in #8 and bump Thymesia off the list)
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Dec 16, 2022 05:01
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Rarity posted:These are two separate games! Please decide which one you want me to give the points to (or you could put the other in #8 and bump Thymesia off the list) No problem, removed Warzone 2.
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Dec 16, 2022 05:04
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Thanks!
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Dec 16, 2022 05:33
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I apologize in advance for how long this ended up being. Honorable Mentions: Sable: This did not run great on my machine, but it was a lovely little exploratory mood piece. I loved poking around this weird world with its alien culture. I have no regrets about taking the vigilante mask in the end and entering the adult world by becoming Batman. Delta Rune Chapter 1: Undertale is probably my favorite video game. I loved this first chapter of the follow up and I really should get around to chapter 2. I don’t think it’s a full game yet, though, so I am deferring judgements. Enter the Gungeon: I 100%’d this a few years ago, but reinstalled and played around 20 hours this year. It really is preposterously good. It is kind of an easy, chill version of Binding of Isaac, and that is a great thing. I like this more than some of the games on my top ten, but I felt this was more a game of a previous year that I revisited rather than something I’d include for this year’s list. Spiritfarer: Truly baffling. This is a freemium resource gathering nightmare fused with a preposterously well executed meditation on grief. The animation and music are breathtaking. The writing is powerful, regardless of structural flaws. It will probably make you cry. The gameplay is unforgivable. This is maybe the most impressive execution I have ever seen in an honestly quite terrible game. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge: Endlessly charming. I am so happy this exists. Underrail: What if you took Fallout, but made the writing really try hard edgy with no humor and also made it extremely punishing? I did not like this game, but I am glad I played it. It is very committed to being what it is, and that makes it pretty fascinating. Pentiment: I am 20 minutes into this game and very excited. Probably on next year’s list. Slime Rancher 2: Extremely pleasant and relaxing, but the rough edges bounced me out of it after 10 hours or so. Why make water so much scarier than lava?! 10. Mario Golf: Super Rush: The story mode for this game is an embarrassment. The golf is a lot of fun. I kind of wish I had just gotten into online play or something instead of doing the story mode and getting tired of it. 9. Before Your Eyes: This is a game that uses eye tracking to control it. It’s very clever and well executed, weaponizing your blink reflex against you. I am not very impressed by games that use kids dying of cancer as the emotional payload, but the ending of this game is very well done and definitely moved me. 8. Vampire Survivors I have 100 percented this game maybe 30 times. It just keeps adding content and achievements. Honestly it’s a bit exasperating at this point. Still, I kept playing for a long time. How could I not? This is a goofy, dopamine inducing breath of fresh air. I will say that Holo Cure is better as a game, but I have to give it to VS for being both bigger and being the innovator. 7. DEATHLOOP This game’s UI and design is so clunky. Just, kludged together nonsense. And the tutorializing is insulting! You can’t turn it off fast enough. Then the story is quite a mess. It is scraped thin over the playtime and the central relationship is hosed up in an off-putting, gross way. This is not the masterpiece that Prey is. What it is, though, is very fun. In the Dishonored games or in Prey, I played very carefully and tried to avoid killing. There was a real tension and a joy in that. DEATHLOOP’s premise and presentation got me to throw all that caution out the window. I would jump into battle with abandon and throw all my guns and powers into the fray and thrill at managing to somehow survive the mayhem. It was great. There are a lot of areas where Arkane seemed to regress from previous efforts here, but DEATHLOOP excels at enticing a chaotic and violent approach from the player. That’s certainly worth something. The fun dialog delivered with incredible charm is also good. 6. Elden Ring: This is my second Fromsoft game. My first was Dark Souls. The thing that most impresses me about Elden Ring is exactly what most impressed me about Dark Souls: its capacity to instill in me a sense of awe. I don’t know if any one thing in Elden Ring hit me as hard as getting to the bottom of the tree and looking out across the beach at other world trees, but there are so many stunning moments. Going down the well the first time. The second coffin trip. Following a shooting star into uncharted depths. Teleporting to a grand church guarded by a demon. Teleporting to a broken floating island surrounded by whirlwinds. Seeing the actual corpse of a giant woman I’ve seen so many statues of. It is a true achievement to have so much game concentrated in a single release, and it is beyond impressive that so much of it is good. I think the scope was a boon for the sense of wonder and exploration, but it was not great for the gameplay. My favorite part of Dark Souls was that moment on a beach at the bottom of the world, but my second favorite thing was the Smaug and Ornstein fight. I got thrashed so many times. Then I took a breath and thought about what was happening. I decided on a strategy, and then I went into battle and implemented it as best I could. And I won! It was such a thrilling, satisfying thing. I usually play games intuitively, but to consciously reflect and implement a plan and then be rewarded for it was so cool. I never experienced that in Elden Ring. With such an extended power curve and with such a breadth of options, it also felt like the answer was about build or loadout, and that’s a shame. Still one hell of a game, but not the slam dunk game of the year I would have said it was 20 hours in. The last 20 hours wore me down and wore me out, tarnishing the whole experience. 5. The Procession to Calvary This adventure game that uses crudely animated cut outs of old oil paintings stars perhaps the most psychopathic video game protagonist I have ever encountered. The crusades have ended and now she can’t kill anymore and that is just the worst tragedy she has ever experienced. It is time to go on a quest to find a religious leader who will give her carte blanche to kill again. This game is so funny, and the puzzles are pretty enjoyable too. I don’t play many adventure games, but I am so glad I played this one. 4. Adios This is a beautiful meditation on choices. It genuinely has something to say about the power of choice. A single choice made at the end of a life is undeniably powerful and important, but reality is reality. One choice, no matter how profound, can erase the lifetime of choices that led up to it. Most of this is conveyed through the wonderful writing and voice acting, but some of it is conveyed through clever gameplay choices. There are dialog options, but many of them are greyed out. Usually, it’s the things you and the character you are playing most desperately want to say. But you can’t say them. The choices that have led him here? The life he’s led? They don’t allow you to say those things. You click them anyway, hoping against hope. They just disappear. 3. Immortality: House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski is a post-modern haunted house story from 2000. It has stories within stories, but the one closest to the reader is that of Johnny Truant. Johnny is a schizophrenic horndog who stumbles upon a very odd manuscript. It’s odd in that it’s in a disordered mess, scrawled across scattered pieces of paper, take-out menus, and who knows what else. It is also odd in that it is an academic critique of a documentary film that does not exist. Johnny Truant starts assembling the manuscript into a readable, intelligible form. The work consumes him. Immortality is a game where you basically do the work Johnny does in House of Leaves. Instead of assembling a manuscript for a documentary that doesn’t exist, you are sifting through archival footage of three movies that don’t exist. You find new clips by pausing and clicking on people or objects in the frame, triggering a match cut to a new scene. The process is frictionless and compelling. Hours pass and you start to piece together what happened in the movies, as well as the deeper darker truths behind the films. It consumes you. 2. Slice and Dice This is probably the best mobile game ever. It is like if Into the Breach both had RNG and wasn’t at all frustrating. An extremely tactical rogue-lite that gives you basically unlimited ability to undo actions. It makes learning all the weird interactions easy and joyful. You can beat your head against insanely difficult challenges. You can assemble super combos and gain incredible power. You can play the best mode, blursed, where you accumulate both blessings and curses and see how far you can fly before the hindrances inevitably outweigh the boosts. It is just wonderful all around. 1. Rogue Legacy 2 I love metroidvanias and I love rogue-lites. I really should have loved the first Rogue Legacy, but I hated it. The controls were floaty. I always felt weak, and the scaling costs of the metaprogression left me feeling like I was in a death spiral. I dropped the game before I beat it even once, and good riddance. Rogue Legacy 2 delivers on all the promise of the first game’s premise. It is brilliantly designed. The controls are tight and make playing a joy. The graphics are polished and charming. I 100% completed this game and I so rarely do that. Rogue Legacy 2 uses metaprogression to take the place of a more normal metroidvania’s leveling system or inventory. Like, in Order of Ecclesia, you gain xp when killing enemies that will ultimately level you up and increase your stats. You’ll also find items that increase your max hp/mp, equipment that can modify your stats further, and souls that you can use to customize your attack options. It’s a fun system. It lets you gain a sense of power over time. It adds some variety, and it interacts with exploration of the map in a synergistic, rewarding way. Rogue Legacy 2’s metaprogression does all of these things, and it does them so much better. Variety especially is so much better incentivized in Rogue Legacy 2. Each run, you’ll be a different class. The classes play so much differently than each other that it’s wild, but they’re all fun. In a castlevania type metroidvania, I think there’s a tendency to find something strong and effective, and then stick with it. Here, the game basically requires you to try different classes. It doesn’t take long to unlock the ability to lock down one of your three randomly generated class options, but even then the game takes pains to incentivize experimentation. Each class gains XP and levels up. Each level provides a bonus that all classes benefit from. The bonuses are nothing make or break, but they do make life easier and they do add up. Really, the game handles incentive structures so well. There are a few layers of short term vs long term risk/reward. Every run, you will run into such choices for the run level. For example, a tree that has two fruits. One heals you. One hurts you but increases your max hp, which is extremely useful for bosses, assuming you have a way to regain that hp. Assuming the next room doesn’t kill you. Then there is the longer term run to run trade offs. You can lock down the castle to practice any given boss fight, but then you’re forfeiting all the rewards (like the fruit) that don’t respawn if the castle is locked. The exploration in the castle and the metaprogression back at your base have all kinds of neat and well thought out interplay and I love it. The writing is not as good as the studio’s previous wonderful effort, Full Metal Furies. It is not bad by any means, but it is mostly just there. This is honestly the most negative thing I can say about Rogue Legacy 2. This game rules and it is easily my game of the year.
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Dec 16, 2022 05:48
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You've convinced me to check out Rogue Legacy 2 sometime with that writeup
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Dec 16, 2022 05:54
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rogue legacy 2 wasn't on my list, but it absolutely would have been if i were judging by soundtracks only https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv1JJSasCKg
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Dec 16, 2022 06:03
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Venuz Patrol posted:5. Tactical Nexus cannot believe someone else put tacnex on their list. it's so good
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Dec 16, 2022 06:27
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Honorable mentions: Trials Fusion - (Ps3/ps4, Xbox360→ - 2014)  Bought it on 3 platforms (ps3/4/360) and still playing it after all these years. There’s always room to improve your time on runs a little. Fun for quick sessions of retrying until you get it right. Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Xbox Series X - 2020)  So pretty platformer. Overstayed its welcome a bit and sudden death stuff was bs, but basic platforming and fightings were fun. Cool little story. Fall Guys (Xbox Series X - 2021)  Had real fun for first month or so just playing. Very casual and stupid, but fun kind of stupid. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (Xbox Series X - 2022)  My childhood brought back in high def. Had real blast with my friends before our rpg shesh. Turns out I have 5 controllers, which was enough for everyone. Vampire Survivors (PC, Xbox Series X - 2022)  the game. Real fun for first 10 hours.I don’t have picture for this one. Sorry. List: 10. Dying Light 2 (PC - 2022)  Fun parkour game in a ruined city that has some zombies (ugh) and humans (even worse) in it. By far the best parkour feels. The story is bit meh, but it gives you more stuff to parkour.  9. Resident Evil 2 - Remake (Xbox Series X - 2019)  I was a big survival horror fan back in the day (Alone in the Dark, Silent Hill), but I never ended up playing this. I was an idiot, this is great game. Much better than RE1 and s actually scary. RE2remake is a great improvement. This feels like a modern game, with some poor decisions, like tiny inventories. 8. Citizen Sleeper – (PC - 2022)  Sleeper hit of the year  . Nice little story-game with dice rolling. You’re an android fugitive falling apart in a far away space station. For each day you roll bunch of dice and perform action like work (to afford to repair yourself) or explore the station. Fun little story that’s best experienced as spoiler-free as possible. 7. Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS5 - 2017)  I originally bounced of this game after reaching the capital. This time I enjoyed this much more and actually prefer this over the sequel. Lot of cool robodinos to shoot and places to explore. And shooting (and exploring) is so much fun. The expansion area improves the base game a lot. Characters and the story are top notch and the new robots are more challenging to fight. 6. Rogue Trader (PC alpha version - 2022)  It’s still in Alpha, but 20 hours in and this feels like Rogue Trader. It is the best game from the Owlcat games even in its current state. Unbalanced as hell, but that’s alpha for you. Combat feels like their Pathfinder games. In a new twist melee character do mostly Area attacks, while ranged characters do mostly single target attacks. There’s automatics gun too like Bolters, but those work best against crowds, because of the low accuracy. You can’t miss all 5 cultists!  Another fun addition to the game is the space exploration. You try to map a routes to your familys planetary holdings through demoninfested warp. You scan planets in systems in style of Mass Effect 2, exploit their resources and occasionally explore some mini dungeons. Occasionally you face enemy ships in naval combat, which has age-of-sails style gameplay. You move your full speed and can do couple of 45 degree turn along the way and try to maneuver your guns to right directions. I can’t wait for the full version (in probably 2024) 5. Shredders (PC – 2022)  Nice little indie snowboarding game It’s not as arcadey like Rider’s republic or Steep, but not fully a sim-game either. You can do fast flippy stuff and more realistic stuff if you prefer that. Landing are easyish enough as long as your board is downward.  Game has real pros with real voices, but no budget for pro-faces. Lol. Storywise Shredders is close to the Skate series. You’re trying to get big on ‘tube and meet some pros and do some tricks with them. Basic goals of these missions are usually simple, but added extra goals are usually bit more involved and require some retries to clear. Story serves it’s purpose in leading you through the game maps. Freeriding is fun too with some cool filming and picture options.  4. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (Xbox Series X - 2021)  Space looks pretty This is the Guardians of the Galaxy: The movie – The game with serials filed off. Which is good, because this game is awesome. It has similar self-deprecating humour and all dozen+ chapters feels like an another episode of GotG.  Drax knows how to state the obvious. Gameplay is the weakest point of the game. It is passable, but nothing special. You play as Starlord and command your team in targetting their special moves. Combos are obvious and (usually) work well. Like in the movies, the game has a kickass soundtrack that enhances the gamefeel. Some Blue oyster Cult, Rick Astley and Europe with a OG band Starlord playing good 80’s Hard Rock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMcQ7qdz37U 3. Overwatch 2 (PC - 2016/2022) https://i.imgur.com/sgFTEUA.mp4 Still the best team-based moba-shooter. New maps, new characters, same old gameplay. I generally don't like online shooters, but I love Overwatch. 1300 hours played and counting. https://i.imgur.com/BNwXjAC.mp4 2. Return to Monkey Island (PC – 2022)  We’re back baby! I always loved the old school Lucas Arts adventure games and the original two Monkey Islands were something special. The Guybrush is back and turned into an old has been. New pirates don’t respect the old ways and LeChuck is still up to no good. Lot of great puzzles and an excellent ending to the Guybrush story.  . . . .  1.  (PC – 2022) What a surprise GOTY and GOAT. I knew nothing about this game or creators previous games and it turned out be such a delight. Immortality is an Interactive Movie. Or actually three movies. Game follows the career of Actress Marissa Marcel from her first movie in the 60s up to her last movie in 90s. What happened to Marissa and her colleagues? And why the movies were never released?  The game consist of couple hundreds of scenes. They go from actor auditions to finished movie scenes and late-night talkshow guest appearances. All they have in common is one thing: They are really drat well acted. These are real indie movies with really great actors! Game has 3 movies. Ambrosio is a late 60s traditional Religious-moralistic tale, that tries to push the boundaries of censorship. Minsky is more modern crime-drama from the 70s and the final movie Two of Us is familiar feeling thriller from the 90s.  The gameplay is pretty simple. You click on people or objects on the movie clips and it takes you to another clip with same actor or similar object. If you click a coffee cup, you get into another scene with a coffee cup. You can scrub film backwards and forward, pause it or watch film frame-by-frame. The movie clips do not unlock in any chronological order so first step of the game is to figure out what the movies are about. New information you get gives new perspective to earlier scenes you watched without a context.  Best part of my playthrough was unlocking my first movie scene by scene. My opinion about the movie and meaning of the scenes changed multiple times as I got deeper. I thought I knew everything, until I stumbled into some secret footage, that were a real whoah moment. Unlocking them? It is a secret, that’s better discovered by yourself.  Game doesn’t hold your hand and tell you what you should think. Lot of the stories meaning is left for you to figure out. I saw the ‘ending credits’ of the game with first 4 hours. I hadn’t seen 2/3rds of the game at that point, but I had seen an ending. There’s a lot to unlock in Immortality and you can quit anytime you feel satisfied by what you’ve seen. I did 910/1000 deep dive into the game and unlocked all the movie clips and based on achievement, saw about 90% of the secret content. I was satisfied with that. Immortality is GOAT and GOTY for me. TLDR: 10. Dying Light 2 9. Resident Evil 2 Remake 8. Citizen Sleeper 7. Horizon: Zero Dawn 6. Rogue Trader 5. Shredders 4. Marvels Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Overwatch 2 2. Return to Monkey Island 1. Immortality Issaries fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Dec 16, 2022 |
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Dec 16, 2022 07:59
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An Actual Princess posted:cannot believe someone else put tacnex on their list. it's so good It didn't surprise me too much to see it on at least one other person's list. For the people that tactical nexus appeals to, it's a black hole from which there can be no escape
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Dec 16, 2022 08:46
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The Top 10: #10: Pharaoh - To my surprise, a city-building "puzzle" game from 1999 is one of the games I've put the most hours into this year. Even using a housing block layout from the Internet, the game is still pretty challenging and requires you to actually think ahead and plan how your city is going to be laid out. This is all because of the special Walker system, where city services will occasionally create little random pedestrians that wander around the city map and deliver their service to any house or building they pass. Every time the walker hits an intersection, they randomly pick a direction to go. So the challenge becomes "build a city with as few intersections as possible." There's a remake that, supposedly, is coming out in the first quarter of 2023. I expect that Pharaoh is going to, once again, make my top 10 list next year. #9: Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga - I have a weakness for Lego games, and this one is incomprehensibly big. The previous Lego Star Wars title, covering all six of the original and prequel movies, was already huge, and this one added the sequel trilogy into the mix as well. It's really good at tickling the same parts of your brain that idle games worm their way into. What can I say, Number Go Up is a hell of a drug. The script is also generally irreverent in the way Lego games are without literally using clips from the movies like they did for the Lego Lord of the Rings games. Traveler's Tales actually have a bunch of professional voice actors reprising their roles from various animated series for the game. James Arnold Taylor and Matt Lanter in particular have a casual familiarity and chemistry that comes from working together for so long voicing characters as close as Obi Wan and Anakin. #8 Jedi Fallen Order - I've been a lowkey Star Wars fan ever since I first played Shadows of the Empire on the N64. While I'm not one of those turbo fans that will buy wookiee merch on sight, I also did not let the way the Sequel Trilogy ended kill my enjoyment of the franchise. Cal Kestis is probably not one of my favorite characters in the series, but he is a lot of fun to play as regardless. He carves a bloody swath through any Stormtroopers that get in his way while never really feeling quite as overpowered as Starkiller did in the Force Unleashed games. And for as powerful as you can get in the game, it's quick to remind you that it's a very dangerous galaxy and even random trash enemies can and will gently caress you up hardcore. My only regret is that the game's final act twist was spoiled by random youtube videos when I was looking up something entirely unrelated. I'm not normally one to care too much about spoilers because context means everything. But it's such a cool moment and I really hate that it was ruined for me before I even first booted the game up. #7 The Forest - This semi-forgotten survival crafting game from 2018 was barely even on my radar when I received it as a gift during Steam's fall sale. I wasn't sure what to even expect when I installed it. So imagine my surprise when it immediately grabbed my attention and wouldn't let me go until I had spent days building a base on the island. I am not too proud to admit to being a pretty big scaredy cat, so I didn't want to do my first playthrough with cannibals enabled. But I eventually went back and have played through it with enemies. The creepy rear end noises they make in the night really add to the game's spooky atmosphere, even if combat is pretty uninspired overall. Survival open world crafting is a meme for a reason, but drat if this game wasn't one of the better ones I've played. #6 Pokemon Scarlet - The last pokemon game I truly played was a balls hard fangame back in 2018-2019. Because it had been a couple years, I was ready to lose myself in this game completely and I got exactly what I had been looking for. A main-line, open world pokemon game where you can see all the cute little monsters out in the field like it's Legends Arceus is all I apparently wanted from the series. So I'm glad they finally created it. #5 Cyberpunk 2077 - A relatively recent addition to the list, if I'm being honest. I saw the shitshow this game had made of itself in 2020 and decided I didn't want any part of that. But as time wore on and more patches happened, I saw people start talking positively about the game. Eventually I had to see what all the fuss was about, and if they had actually fixed the many problems it had at launch. Short answer? Yes. The PC I bought halfway through the year has a pretty decent graphics card and processor, and so I was able to run the game at a decent framerate even with RTX enabled (though not maxed out.) I don't know if I was just in the mood for an open world driving sandbox or what, but the game had its hooks in me from minute one. Some days I played, I didn't make any story progress and spent all my time wandering around doing sidequests. But never once did I feel like I was wasting time. Speaking of the story, I really appreciated that the game's story was a relatively straightforward drama. After spending so much time this year and last year replaying the Saints Row games, having a story that took itself seriously was such a refreshing change of pace. I will freely admit that by the end of the game, I was starting to feel fatigued with the open world, so I did beeline for the end of the story once the opportunity presented itself. But I don't hold that against Cyberpunk because that's more on me instead of the game. Also because the game has dozens of sideqeusts and hundreds of police activity markers and I can't imagine what sort of person can completely clear the map and come back for more! #4 Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - It probably doesn't count by most metrics, because it's been on version 0.F all year long, but CDDA is up there with Rimworld and Elden Ring for my biggest time vacuums of the year. I have started so, so, so many characters and taken them to their tragic ends and it never really stops being interesting. From the early game to the late game, looting for valuables in the post-apocalypse is always good for a surprise. I can't tell you how many times I've laughed to myself when an otherwise-innocuous suburban house has a bondage suit in the closet and an anime body pillow on the bed. Or a grow op in the basement, for that matter. The sheer amount of weird poo poo you can find while looting is one of the game's biggest draws for me, because you never really know what's in any random house on the street. #3 Rimworld - I have a personal rule to not include DLC on my top 10 list, which is why this isn't for Biotech specifically. But I've put hundreds of hours into the game in this year alone. Every colony brings something new that I've never seen before. And with the game's insanely active modding community, even if it stopped receiving updates tomorrow, it would remain an evergreen game forevermore. I used to dump all those hours into Dwarf Fortress, and ever since discovering Rimworld, I haven't felt the need to go back. Also it's really funny naming your colonists after Dragonball Z characters and watching them hook up. #2 Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - I came into Pathfinder not knowing poo poo from shine about tabletop games. All I really knew going in was JoCat's famous crap guide stuff about D&D 5e. Like Elden Ring, the game did not get off on its best foot with me. Advice I was given led to me having four out of the five people in my party at the start of the game with access to the same divine spells. This was also before Owlcat had fixed a particularly annoying bug with turn-based mode and arched doorways that led to them being solid walls. I couldn't even make a level up without asking three or four different people advice on what perks and traits to take. I was about ready to quit the game and never come back by the act 2 end dungeon because in turn-based mode it took six realtime hours. At one point I was left waiting for 10 actual real life minutes because one enemy spellcaster used a crowd control effect that didn't go away after combat and had, yes, a 10 minute duration. But something about the game kept me coming back to it. The story, while nothing special, was a fun power fantasy. The combat... well, my enjoyment of the game went up tenfold once I started running all trash encounters in realtime mode. I really grew to love the game the more I played of it, until by the end I was hooked and couldn't wait to see how everything turned out. It's one of the few games on the list where I can start new runs endlessly because it's so much fun trying out different classes and combinations. #1 Elden Ring - A friend gifted me this for my birthday back in April, and I had to admit I was curious. Up until that point I had played almost every Souls game close to release. But my PC at the time was extremely old and had been showing signs of age for a while. So there was no way Elden Ring was even going to run on it. Come the end of June, I finally broke down and got a new PC altogether and this was one of the first things I installed on it. I'm not ashamed to admit that I bounced off the game super hard at first. The lesson that Margit was supposed to impart upon you was completely lost on me. Not helping matters were people pointing me at increasingly terrifying places to explore for marginal-at-best gains. So I ragequit and left it alone for two and a half months. Come the start of October, I thought 'well hell why not' and reinstalled the game and actually tried exploring in other directions. I immediately loved the game once I wasn't beating my head against what I still consider to be one of the game's least fun bosses. And coming back hours later with a much better weapon and better stats to pound him flat was extremely cathartic. It's easily a masterpiece and that's not a statement I use lightly. I often have said in the past that one of my favorite runs I have ever done of Dark Souls 2 was a poison and bleed build. Elden Ring let me relive that and showed me just how much better it's gotten in the intervening years. There's something satisfying about hitting a boss and knowing that, even as you back off to avoid their counterattack, they're still taking damage. And ripping huge chunks out of enemy HP bars with bleed procs never got old! Honorable Mentions: Power Wash Simulator/Hardspace Shipbreaker/Car Mechanic Simulator 2021/American Truck Simulator - I'm a sucker for a good simulation game. However, I'm legitimately unsure if I'm having fun playing any of these or if I'm just glad to have something for my hands to do while listening to stuff. These four are my most likely to be booted up if I'm listening to a podcast, or listening to someone's longform video essay about whatever. Yakuza Like A Dragon - I haven't played this enough to actually see much of the story yet. I'm sure I'm going to like it, but I really doubt I'm gonna finish it in time for the end of the year. 14 hours in a Yakuza game is nothing at all! Sekiro Shadows Die Twice - Like Yakuza 7, I haven't put enough hours into this to really see much of anything yet. Also shortly after I started playing it, I got my new PC and started playing Elden Ring instead. Project Wingman - Ace Combat with the serial numbers filed off! The game is drat good and the only reason it's not on my top 10 is because everything up on there is so much stronger. Black Mesa - A fantastic re-imagining of the original Half-Life. It's also a really faithful re-imagining because the Xen chapters really drag the rest of it down. This was originally in my #10 spot, but I spent most of its writeup dragging on how bad Xen was. DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 11:15 on Dec 16, 2022 |
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Dec 16, 2022 11:12
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I could only manage a "top 6" this year but here it is all the same. 6. Neon White I don't pay attention to speed running and I certainly don't dabble in it myself. But trying to race through the levels in this game is lots of fun even if you're not a min-max sweatlord in fps games. The music is great and the graphics have a certain sort of style to them. Some people think the story segments are cringy and one character is irritating in the same way Tiny Tina was. I didn't think it was as bad as all that but I still wouldn't call those parts of the game a "strength". Still, there had to be something for you to do between the high energy missions. 5. Stray You play as a cat poking around people's houses in a post apocalyptic cyberpunk city. That either sells you on the game right there or it doesn't. The cat was cute and cat-like in all the ways you'd want and the city and homes were interesting to explore. 4. Astalon: Tears of the Earth Another 8-bit inspired Metroidvania is a really hard sell in 2022. I get it. We have PLENTY of those. But Astalon really felt like a stand-out example. It gets all the fundamentals right but the the way your three playable characters can be leveled up and improved really made the game shine. It starts out tough-but-fair like the the old 8-bit Castlevania games but by the end you're so powerful with such an expanded move-set that the final boss feels like a victory lap. Every limitation in the game is there just so it can feel great when you find something to overcome it. Always rewarding; never frustrating. 3. Vampire Survivors When people say this game is addictive they're not exaggerating. The guy who made it used to work in the gambling industry and you can tell. It's all quick and easy dopamine hits with none of the financial exploitation. Everyone I've bullied into trying it has loved it after a single round. Absolutely fun. 2. Elden Ring I'm not sure what else to say about open world Dark Souls except I can't believe they pulled it off. The Souls games always had a bit of technical jank to them which seems like a recipe for disaster in an open world game. That jank is still present but somehow it doesn't get in the way and I don't know that I would want to play a Souls game without it. Exactly the game I wanted it to be and one of FromSoft's best. 1. Deep Rock Galactic This is the most fun I've ever had with a co-op game and the first game I've ever enjoyed playing with random strangers. I don't know what it is about this game that causes everyone to be cool and have fun but I wish more games could pull it off. A bottomless pit of good times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eUzjWeLU80 wash bucket fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Dec 16, 2022 |
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Dec 16, 2022 17:39
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This is gonna be my weirdest list ever. In 2022 I branched out in my gaming tastes more than ever before, playing (and loving) my first ever JRPG, a classic PlayStation franchise I had mostly ignored, and the most calming piece of media I’ve ever consumed. Thanks to Game Pass, I checked out so many games I never would have otherwise - I didn’t finish a whole lot of them, but I gave them a shot! And of course I also smoked many of 2022’s big releases, most of which I found hugely satisfying. Here are the 25 games I played enough of for me to consider worth ranking: Part 1: Didn’t Finish Or Disliked 25. A Memoir Blue I’m a big fan of your narrative games, your walking simulators, alla that. But this…..this ain’t a video game, and it should never have been released as a video game. 24. As Dusk Falls Really interesting story that under normal circumstances I would have completed, but the “animation” style was incredibly ugly and really off-putting and I had too much other stuff on the go at the time. 23. Guardians of the Galaxy Really good writing! I think. I can’t tell because one line starts and you move 10 metres and it cuts off that conversation for a new conversation, so unless you literally stand still and listen to everything you will miss a lot. And the combat was not my style at all. Got to this monster boss in like chapter 4 which was not difficult at all but still managed to take forever and be super annoying and never looked back. 22. Death’s Door Really cool and pretty, just not my style really. I played a little Tunic earlier today and of the two that’s the one I’m more likely to continue with, but I’m still unsure. 21. Forza Horizon 5 I’m not a racing guy but this was my “I got an OLED and an Xbox, let’s see how pretty video games can get!” game. Turns out, real real REAL fuckin pretty. Game is clearly very fun aside from that, too. If I were a racing guy I would have sunk many hours into this. 20. Tales from the Borderlands I played this one for VideoGames and streamed myself doing the first four of five acts. I was having a cool time! Then depression hit and I never got round to the last one. After a few months I realised that the writing and characters hadn’t stuck with me like they do for so many, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back. Amazing voice acting, though. 19. Immortality Not digging this one stung, man. The concept is phenomenal, the amount of detail that’s gone into the visuals of each era is incredible, the performances are amazing, and the mystery is fascinating. I got a good few hours in and uncovered a ton of clips, but I just……didn’t feel anything. I was just pressing buttons and watching stuff and not feeling anything about any of it. I think I need a little guidance with something like this, and it was just too opaque. Part 2: Not The Top 10 18. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes BEFORE YOU KILL ME, I had watched a friend play through the PSX version a couple years ago, so I had already seen that telling of the story. The gameplay in this one is more dated than I expected given how many of 2’s elements it added in, but I enjoy the nonsense anime tone a lot more than many. 17. Stray Well worth the time I spent playing it, but would have worn out its welcome if it had gone on much longer. Mostly a good-not-great adventure/puzzler, but the cat of it all is just excellent and loveable as hell. 16. Metro Exodus: Sam’s Story This was the first thing I played this year, as I just ran out of time in 2021. It’s a very good piece of DLC and great companion to the main game. Sam is the best. 15. Inscryption Never thought I’d be into any kind of card game, but the concept and visual style of this one convinced me to give it a chance, and I liked it a lot! Great mechanics and a fascinating story. The middle section wasn’t for me but luckily it’s easy to cheese, and the final section was fantastic again. 14. The Last of Us Part 1 The 2022 remake, just to be super duper clear. One of the best games ever gets even better, with unbelievably gorgeous graphics and a whole host of cool new options. The motion/facial capture in this game is easily the best there has ever been in the whole medium, adding another layer of emotion to scenes that were already as hard-hitting as it gets. But it being a remake of a game I’ve played multiple times before I couldn’t put it any higher than this. 13. Splatoon 3 I hate that this is so low. Splatoon is by far the most I have ever been into a multiplayer game, and I was so excited for this for months. And the game is great! It’s everything I wanted with the series’ best single-player mode yet, an improved Salmon Run, and mostly the same wonderfully fun and satisfying PVP modes. But man……the connection issues fuckin killed me. They were so consistently bad all the time, I couldn’t get through even three matches without a drop, and eventually I just gave up. I’ve heard it’s only marginally better now, so even the new catalogue hasn’t convinced me to give it a shot. Hopefully I can get back into it in a big way in 2023. 12. Horizon Forbidden West I really thought this would crack the top 10 at least, fuckin hell. A game of two halves for me - I thought the story, characters, and locations were even better than in the first game, but the combat, activities, and sheer Map Gaminess of it all is significantly worse. Every robot spends 85% of its time running directly towards you AND the rolling I-frames are less effective than before, which together were horribly frustrating. But the story was consistently excellent, with a strong central character arc and a wealth of side characters I grew very attached to, as well as at least two or three of my favourite scenes of the year in any piece of media. However, I’m still very much looking forward to the DLC and will gobble it up like a little piggy day one oink oink oink 11. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Honestly this and 10th place are essentially interchangable, I only left this off the list because 10 is a 2022 game and I wanted it to have the extra point. It is so obvious why this is considered the best MGS game and one of the all-time greats, it is absurdly satisfying on every single level, has incredible gameplay that mostly still holds up, the story and characters are probably Kojima’s best to date…..it is very much “the complete package”. Only reason it isn’t as much of a personal fave for me: I’m not all that into spy movies! So a lot of the pastiches and references and just core concept didn’t do as much for me as they do for a great many others. Still a well-deserved classic. Kojima the GOAT Part The Top 10: The Top 10! 10. Kirby and the Forgotten Land /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70660633/Switch_KirbyTFL_SCRN_Jan2022_3DAction_01_bmp_jpgcopy.0.jpg) Kirby is the best!!! Nintendo’s little blob boy has been A Perfect Character for years but I never really liked any of the games with his name on it before except for Dream Course. I was sold on his first proper 3D adventure from the first announcement - it looked just like a cross between Marios Odyssey and 3D World, both of which I adore. And then the final game, was.......well, it was almost exactly that! And it RULED. This game is one of the best examples ever of “kiddy” not meaning bad - it’s pretty simple, even on Wild Mode, but the levels, enemies, and powers are all so well-designed and fun that it gets by on sheer joy. Kirby can swallow a car! Kirby can become a tornado or a drill or a dragon! As VideoGames no doubt had hours of fun discovering, Kirby can shoot dogs to death! With a gun! It’s a vintage Nintendo experience that constantly left me with a smile on my face and I would like a sequel very much please. 09. PowerWash Simulator  No, this is not a joke. No, I haven’t made some egregious typo. In a year where I was frequently feeling a storm of emotions, this was my oasis. So many times I planned to play this while catching up on music or podcasts, only to spend hours listening to the sound of the spray hitting various surfaces. I’ve never been interested in any of these simulation games before, yet I did every single thing in this one and could have done twice the amount had it been there. It burrowed right into the pleasure centre of my brain and it did not leave, and I would play it for such long periods that people on discord who could see my status would message me concerned. The core gameplay is, of course, pointing your power washer at various muddy surfaces and moving it around until the dirt is gone, with various nozzles and soapy accompaniments. This core loop of just cleaning a thing is so, so satisfying, and the ding sound effect when a particular area is done is like Pavlov’s whistle to me. But what makes it an actual really good game as opposed to just a satisfying experience is two-handed - the level of care that was put into every detail (perhaps enforced by unexpected publisher Square Enix?) ensured it never had the jank one would expect from something like this, while the sense of humour, weird cast of characters (who you only interact with via text message), and bizarre unfolding story gives it a genuinely strong, if excessively silly, narrative backbone. Only beaten in pure dopamine levels by the next game on this list…. 08. Vampire Survivors  The day my Steam Deck shipped, I told the PS Goon Discord and received a message from Cowman, who asked for my Steam ID so he could gift me this. I’d never heard of it, but I was still very grateful, and I said sure! When the Deck arrived, I still hadn’t bothered to look into what the game was, but decided it would only be polite to give it a shot. Little did I know the pit I was about to fall into: much like with PowerWash, I did not stop playing this game until I had done Every Single God Damned Thing, and even then I kept on doing runs for fun. It’s just that good. A lot of words have been typed about developer Luca Galante’s background in slot machine graphics, and how he has successfully translated this skill into eye-catching visuals that remain satisfying the tenth, hundredth, or fifty thousandth time, but none of those words can truly explain how god damned good it feels to level up, to unlock a chest, to destroy entire screens of enemies with just a slight movement. This really deserves every bit of success it’s had, and I was so so happy to be able to pass it on by gifting it to VideoGames after he bought his Deck. Plus there was just some DLC released???? For less than £1.50???? jesus loving christ. Forget Game Pass, THIS is the best deal in gaming. I’m having to force myself to finish writing this list before I even start the new content, that’s how addictive this game is. 07. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye  The original Outer Wilds is full-stop one of the best games there has ever been, an enigmatic brain-twisting time-loop masterpiece with such sheer ambition it was a mystery how Mobius Digital would be able to follow it up at all, let alone risk messing with the perfect fabric by adding more content. But my lord if they didn’t absolutely nail it. Echoes of the Eye is a perfect piece of DLC, an incredible accompaniment to the main game that introduces even more mind-blowing worlds and mechanics while also expanding on and deepening the original story. The nature of Outer Wilds is such that the less I say the better, but from the puzzling, easily-missable route you take to discovering the new area, right through to the closing moments, it remains as transfixing and absorbing as the original game. When it finished, I cried, and then I finished the original game again with the new information I had, and I cried even more. Were it not for one of the game’s core mechanics being extremely frustrating to me - even with an option they added later to make it less annoying - this would be in my top 5 no doubt. But the fact remains that even with this mechanic (which, maybe I was downplaying it before - I really hate it) it manages to be a soaring success on par with the original game. Now have they fixed the current-gen version yet or what 06. Psychonauts 2 /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69763073/Psychonauts_psychedelic.0.png) Tim Schafer’s sequel to the 2005 cult classic - a fantastic platformer revolving around the training of psychic secret agents who enter peoples’ subconscious - was a long time coming and fraught with many difficulties. I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for assuming it would never come out. Luckily, thanks to Schafer’s persistence and Microsoft’s deep pockets, it finally made it onto our devices last year, and it could not have been any better. It’s not just a vastly improved sequel on every level, but one of the all-time best game developer’s greatest projects yet, easily standing alongside classics like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle as a hilarious, thoughtful, and wildly fun adventure. Every scene and level of this game is so full of brilliant imagination, fantastic writing, and gorgeous designs. The main levels - all set inside peoples minds, showing you their greatest loves, fears, and regrets - are funnier than ever while also being a very strong depiction of mental health in a great many cases (the team worked closely with mental health advocates Take This during production), and the overworld is a blast to explore, full of hidden secrets and cute quirks. The story is a little over-complicated, but also a great look into responsibility and empathy for others with standout scenes for all of the surprisingly huge cast. While the platforming in the first game was somewhat janky even for 2005, this one is an absolute joy to play, with your various psychic abilities more fun than ever. This was one of the very first games I played this year, and even so many months later I remain stunned at what a massive success it turned out to be. 05. Pentiment  This came out of actual nowhere for me, I’d never heard of it before release and now every goon is talking about it??? How come??? OH it’s because it’s Josh loving Sawyer, director of New Vegas (still in the pantheon of impossibly well-written video games) and extremely cool goon guy, giving us a narrative adventure with branching paths and detailed characters. Yeah that sounds good. Ok I’m playing it. Oh wow this is good. Oh poo poo these twists! I feel really connected to this town. Now I’m crying. And I’m crying again. Ok now it’s over and I’m loving SOBBING holy poo poo. The best and most powerful 16th century Bavarian village tale I have personally ever played, Pentiment is a stunning achievement in storytelling, and an incredible mediation on the power of community, the weight of history, the lunacy of piousness, the love of family, the joy of sharing a meal with friends, and the ability to pet cats and dogs equally. I was skeptical about the art in still images but in motion it’s gorgeous, with animations that are beautifully evocative in their simplicity and some absolutely incredible composition. And while there is a player character who you shape and feel connected to, one of the game’s biggest successes is that the town and the web of connections between everyone feels so much more important than any one particular person. The final act of this game is in many ways a huge gamble, but one that pays off in spades, leading to one of the most satisfying conclusions in any piece of media in 2022 (and that’s saying something, given some of the shows that ended this year), and one that left me a complete emotional wreck. The few bugs I ran into (it probably needed another couple months in the oven - I wonder if Microsoft were pressuring them for the November release) were nowhere near enough to affect my enjoyment in any way. If you like narrative games or just narratives in general, you owe it to yourself to play this. Now can someone please give our boy a gigantic budget to make whatever he wants??? 04. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty  There’s a scene in this game - well, who are we kidding, it’s Kojima, it’s a series of scenes - where my jaw was absolutely on the floor. I watched, aghast, amazed, as a video game from 2001, through the medium of evil AI pretending to be my boss and girlfriend, accurately laid out the next two decades of disinformation, echo chambers, cult of personality, and division in politics, the media, and online. My brain, which had already become some sort of jelly from all the OTHER nonsense I’d encountered up until then, simply melted and became a puddle of goo on the floor. It’s still there. Every time I want to use it I have to put my ear to the floor. It’s pretty awkward. While I do agree that Snake Eater is an improvement in many ways, this is my favourite Metal Gear Solid game, both for the sheer wealth of ideas and the absolute bugfuck insanity that emanates from every pore. Even more than Death Stranding - the first Kojima game I ever got into, and my favourite game I played in 2019 - this is gaming’s #1 auteur at his most prescient, his most insane, his most intense, and his most nakedly emotional. There’s also a vampire who can walk on water, and, uhhh, some fairly (by which I mean literally) incestuous revelations! I don’t know that any game has ever walked such a tonal tightrope, and the fact that it works as well as it does even 20% of the time, let alone for nearly all of it, is pure magic. Don’t you also play video games though?? Well this game even today plays absolutely beautifully, feeling light years ahead of the first one instead of just one console generation away, with a wealth of satisfying mechanics and weapons. But honestly it could play like total poo poo and it would still be this high. The ideas Kojima presents, and the surreal, post-modern way in which they are presented, made such a huge impression on me that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I am so, so happy I finally managed to play this. 03. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age  I wasn’t a JRPG person and now because of Dragon Quest 11 I am. I’m midway through a playthrough of Persona 5 Royal, I have many 2D Final Fantasy games/Chrono Trigger ready to go on the Deck, and Final Fantasy 16 is going to be the first main series title I buy. After I tried FF7 OG post-remake and had a horrible time I truly thought I would never be into turn-based combat, but then I watched a video by some guy called Tim Rogers that convinced me to pick this one up on sale and now an entire world has opened up to me. All because of this game. This magical, stupendous, big loving warm hug of a game. There’s a million reasons why this is the perfect game for getting people into old-school-style JRPGs. Primarily for me, the auto-battle is extremely detailed, to the point where I feel like the devs actually intend you to have it on for most of the open areas and dungeons, and there’s like 50 other great QoL upgrades that make exploring, upgrading, crafting, and just living in this world a breeze. This freed me up to focus on the stuff I really loved - namely, these characters! Your party are all fantastic, and the focus on spending time with them, chatting with them, and their individual arcs, is so satisfying. Even outside of the main group, there’s a plethora of weird and wonderful buds around the world, all of whom are loveable in their own way. The designs - known to so many for so long, but all new to me - are best-in-show, with every ridiculous monster having bags of personality. It all comes together to create a world that is, tonally, one of the nicest and most warmly charismatic places I’ve ever spent time in. Dragon Quest 11 opened up so many doors for me by being so heartfelt, so genuine, so mother loving delightful that I simply have no choice but to see what other experiences I can have in this genre. And those who know me will tell you - that’s the biggest compliment I could have possibly given it. 02. God of War Ragnarok  I’m a huge fan of all kinds of video games, but there’s something about a AAA blockbuster project coming in and nailing everything that hits different to anything else. For many people, the 2018 God of War reboot, featuring genocidal Greek baddy-boy Kratos bearded and child-rearing, was exactly this, but I wasn’t quite as into it. But for the sequel - and conclusion to the Norse saga - Santa Monica Studios went bigger and better in every way, creating a spectacular apocalyptic rollercoaster of a game that in my mind improves on every single thing about the first and is perhaps the most satisfying big-budget Hollywood-epic-style game I have ever played. Where God of War 2018 had an effective small-scale story with strong character work, this one has a HUGE realm-spanning world-ending tyrant-hunting story, but one that still nails the character arcs at nearly every turn, building upon its predecessor’s foundation and treating us to a wild amount of satisfying twists and conclusions to the stories of Kratos, Atreus, and the collection of loveable freaks that make up their found family. While I found the gameplay a little bit too weighty before, in this I found the characters to be a dream to control, and pulling off your various attacks and maneuvers felt more satisfying than ever before. And from a craft perspective, it’s just loving phenomenal - every polygon of every model, every tiny piece of SFX, every note of every track of the GOAT-level score, every line or minor grunt from the superb voice actors, and every subtle piece of animation have been pored over with such love and care, and it all results in one of the most impressive video game presentations there has ever been, elevating the storytelling wonderfully. It’s definitely not perfect - a lot of the second act revolves around my least favourite kind of character conflict, and one major supporting character’s arc is severely truncated, resulting in their climactic moments not hitting as hard as they should - but this game nails so, so many of the big and little things, and I was in tears for so much of the climax. There’s a moment during the epic finale where we take a breather from the battle and there is a scene between Kratos and Atreus that brings the former’s arc over the past two games full circle in such a perfect way that I was a total wreck, and that’s only the beginning of several incredible, pitch-perfect character moments. This is the peak of large-scale blockbuster gaming, and I’ll be there day one for whatever this team makes next. 01. Elden Ring  Sometimes I think about what would have happened if lockdown hadn’t bored me into trying Bloodborne for the third time, kicking off my personal videogaming October Revolution and giving me first one, then two, and now three of my top five games of all time. Given my various personality defects, it’s likely I would have spent a lot of time being vaguely annoyed that a game in a style I wasn’t into was taking up so much discussion space. Despite him being a completely fictional version of me who only exists in hypotheticals, I feel very sorry for this Esco. Because the Fromsoft cult were right, they have always been right, and they always will be right - these games are as good as this medium gets. They are pure Video Gaming, melted down into its most satisfying form, and Elden Ring is the biggest, most ambitious, and most groundbreaking yet, upending the sandbox even more than Breath of the Wild (hey, another of my top 5 games!) and receiving more accolades in ten months than most of the all-time best games get in ten years. All deserved. If you’re reading this, you know what Soulslikes are. Third-person action RPGs with a focus on customisable builds and a level of challenge that encourages patience and thoughtful play while avoiding straying into the realm of pure cruelty (for the most part). This was the first of From’s games in the genre they created in six long years - although they did put out the impeccable character action-focused Sekiro in between - and it was a return that didn’t put a foot wrong. From the moment you finish the tutorial and open the doors into Limgrave, the mystery and challenges of every corner of this world call out to you, begging you to explore every crevice and rewarding exploration in a way no open world game ever has. And the rewards are incredible - unbelievable bosses that will test your skills while awing you with their designs, weapons for any possible playstyle, spells to bring all sorts of heck down on your enemies, spirit summons to sic on them, and a whole mess of funny little helmets and such. But the biggest reward was always just discovering new areas, getting a new map marker and being gobsmacked at how much bigger it seemed to get LITERALLY AT LEAST SIX TIMES, seeing what new locations and tests lurked around every corner. And that’s before I even get into the more typical dungeons, which are up there with the best areas of any Souls game, especially the intricate Stormveil Castle and elaborate Volcano Manor. From’s games have always had esoteric storylines, and this is no exception, but the lore in this game is so much more pronounced and interesting than ever before. The mixture of a backstory from old-timey-sea-captain-lookin-rear end George R. R. Martin and the present-day narrative from Soulskirobornering director Hidetaka Miyazaki creates a world that, even more so than the other From games, feels packed full of history at every turn. The bosses you’re fighting aren’t just mooks - they’re tragic heroes, deformed monstrosities, monarchs of fallen kingdoms, warriors who love their pet donkeys. The history of each area and its rulers seeps into the others, deepening your connection to the world and causing the Lands Between to feel even more like a real place than From’s already best-in-class locations - Yharnam, Ashina, or even Drangleic.  As you may have noted at the beginning, this was also the first Fromsoft game I got on release, and oh boy did that add a whole extra layer of enjoyment. This is easily one of the best games ever to have been in on the ground floor for, with the ability to share secrets with your friends and team up against seemingly insurmountable foes creating a real sense of community. As another goon stated, I went south where many of my friends went north, and being able to share that there was an entire area they had missed because the game was pointing them in the opposite direction, and then seeing their reactions to it, was such a satisfying feeling. Teaming up with friends and going toe-to-toe with some of the biggest baddies remains my favourite co-op in any franchise. And the sheer wealth of secrets - check behind this bush, look down this cliff face, use this spell in front of this statue - ensured that the whole time we were playing we never ran out of stuff to tell each other. Between me and the various people playing this game at launch I was talking to, on here and otherwise, we must have shared hundreds of tips and tricks, and it added even more joy and surprise to the experience. Elden Ring drove me out of my mind. I played this game probably 15-16 hours a day for over a week and a half, wringing every bit of content out of it and then spending several more hours being summoned before I even took so much as a break. It was my entire life for that period, but there is no better game for the task of becoming your life for a while. Elden Ring is a masterpiece on every level - perfect gameplay, astonishing designs, soaring music, incredible locations, captivating secrets, joyous co-operation, exhilarating challenge. It is a medium-changing instant classic from the best developers in the business that succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest dreams in every single way. And it’s not even their best game!!!!! https://twitter.com/bownsgamepics/status/1498836553283645445 Thank you for reading this! Here’s the simple version of the full list for Rarity and veeg: 10. Kirby and the Forgotten Land 09. PowerWash Simulator 08. Vampire Survivors 07. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye 06. Psychonauts 2 05. Pentiment 04. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 03. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 02. God of War Ragnarok 01. Elden Ring Escobarbarian fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Dec 17, 2022 |
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Dec 16, 2022 19:20
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Epic list esco. A jrpg in at number three... hold on, there seems to be something in my eye...
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Dec 16, 2022 19:56
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DQ gifting Bown with some hard earned character development... truly this is the season of joy. 
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Dec 16, 2022 21:28
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Tremendous list, Esco. That's a lot of good first times in one year, especially with some of those older 00's games which take a bit more effort, or hardware flexibilty at least, to get back into. I still wish I hadn't sold my copy of MGS3 Subsistence on PS2, the one that came with MG/MG2 and bonus disc, plus MG Online. Leave it to one of gaming's true pioneers to have made the first truly worthwhile remaster in the biz as well.
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Dec 16, 2022 22:16
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Yeah, really enjoyed reading that list, and I love how DQXI seems to awaken something in people (myself included!) because it really is just that wonderful an experience. 
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Dec 16, 2022 23:43
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It's Sylvando
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Dec 16, 2022 23:47
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I feel like I must be missing part of my soul because of how many times I've bounced off Dragon Quest 11.
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Dec 16, 2022 23:49
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Not every game is for every person and you shouldn't force yourself to try and play a game you're not enjoying even if everybody else seems to love it. You're fine  ....but maybe make sure you are casting a reflection in a mirror, just to be on the safe side....
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Dec 16, 2022 23:54
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Epic High Five posted:It's Sylvando The way I always describe it is prior to Sylvando joining, your party doesn't really feel like a "party." It just feels like four people who happen to be going to the same place. The second Sylvando joins, you become a cohesive group. He brings such a lively, joyous spark to that game.
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Dec 17, 2022 00:36
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Thank you all. It really means so much. And yes Sylvando is perfect he is so kind and cheerful and took an already fantastic game to another level
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Dec 17, 2022 00:40
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McCracAttack posted:I feel like I must be missing part of my soul because of how many times I've bounced off Dragon Quest 11. Try playing in exactly 40 mins chunks the game is paced so that every objective takes about that long. I played it that way for a couple months while enjoying other things and its very good like that.
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Dec 17, 2022 01:25
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Another top 10 with DQ11!
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Dec 17, 2022 02:15
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I always look forward to the Something Awful GotY thread. It's a great way to see all the things I missed this year and now get to look forward to. Early Access First, shoutouts to a few titles that likely would be in my top 10 were it not for the fact that they're constantly getting better The Planet Crafter:  I really want to like incremental games. I really want to like survival games. I enjoy that feeling of exploring and mastering new systems. But most incremental and survival games seem to be tuned around being a 100+ hour forever game. While not yet finished, The Planet Crafter is a tight, 20-hour experience where you turn a barren rock into an earthlike paradise by exploring, building bases, and making numbers go up. For me the game sits in a goldilocks zone between Subnautica and Satisfactory. Subnautica has basebuilding, but little reason to do so. Satisfactory wants the player to build huge, sprawling factories, but doesn't give the player the necessary tools for that kind of scale. The Planet Crafter gives the player reasons to build bases in the regions they've discovered, but never on such a scale the building them becomes tedious. Mindustry:  About a year ago I described Mindustry in the management games thread as a kind of maximalist take on the factory game genre, one that throws in everything from tower defense, RTS units, a campaign map, multiplayer, and blocks that can launch other blocks, but as a result lacks direction and balance and can be difficult to read. In November v7 launched, bringing a new campaign with an entirely new set of blocks, units, and maps. And it addressed almost every problem with the original Serpulo campaign, down to the blocks using bolder, easier-to-distinguish colors and shapes instead of Serpulo's grey squares. Every map has a progression to it, where taking territory means more access to more space and resources for your factory which means being able to build new units and defeat the enemy base. And enemy bases, instead of being a line of boring pillboxes, build their units in factories just like yours, meaning that cracking a defensive chokepoint lets you godzilla rampage your mechanical spider through their fragile pipes and conveyors. Mindustry v6 was an interesting engine and a fun sandbox, but v7 is a great game. Honorable Mentions 16. Slipways (2021): An enjoyable economy game where you link up planets to generate points and resources. It's not hugely replayable and it falls a little short as the end score rating isn't related to the randomly generated map you're playing on, but developing some planets isn't a bad way to spend 20 or so hours. 15. The Forgotten City (2021): A lot has already been said about The Forgotten City. It's not as clever as it thinks it is, but it isn't without its charms and a-ha moments. 14. Monster Train: The Last Divinity (2021): On its surface, every change makes Monster Train more Monster Train. More opportunities for scaling synergies, and a clever system where you can choose when you take these bonuses (with the downside that enemies get boosted too). But looking deeper the expansion left the game in a fairly unbalanced state with a few dominant strategies and some units being unplayably bad. If the developers had put out 2-3 more patches the game would probably be back in my top 10, but it stops a little short of greatness. 13. AI: The Somnium Files: Nirvana Initiative (2022): In terms of the line-to-line writing, I honestly think AI2 is better than the original. There's a lot less Date and Aiba sitting in the car summarizing the exact scene you just watched. The somnium design is also improved, with significantly less moon logic. On the other hand, while the first game stands on its balance of grisly murder investigation, comedy, and heartfelt moments (and ability to roller coaster between these clashing modes), AI2 really only has the comedy. The crime scenes are bloodless (likely to avoid how the original game was condemned by an Adults Only rating in Japan) and the ability to do heartfelt moments is severely curtailed by the needs of The Twist. Now, I love the twist. It's incredibly dumb and contrived and I spent a minute straight laughing when I hit it. But far too much had to be sacrificed to achieve that. 12. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (2019): In 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim there's a move where your giant robot fires several hundred missiles at once and it looks like stars are falling in slow motion as the ground is covered by AOE indicators. It's honestly not a very good move because the AOE is inconvenient and most of the missiles won't hit anything (and the ones that do won't do much because they're fairly weak and don't pierce armor). 13 Sentinels is kind of like that. It's firing a hundred plot threads at once and most of them aren't very engaging (especially the lategame romance arcs, which apart from 1-2 exceptions are universally terrible), but the spectacle of firing that many at once is a success. It's a game about being a teenager and watching giant robot anime and VHS tapes of Gojira and The Terminator and thinking that's the coolest poo poo every and being right that it is. 11. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022): Xenoblade 3 has the best main cast of the trilogy, the second best battle system after Torna, and some great moments (the Chapter 3-4 and 5-6 climaxes in particular). However, the size of the world is undermined by how empty/underdeveloped it is, traversal and combat are both slow, and the cast is mostly uninteresting outside of the main characters. The last two chapters are also clearly rushed, although the DLC might fix this like Torna did for Xenoblade 2. But if you want a 60-100 hour shonen adventure about using the power of friendship to punch scenery-chewing rubber suit monsters it won't disappoint. The List 10. Crystal Project (2022): Square Enix has dedicated millions of dollars and some very talented people to replicating the appeal of Final Fantasy V. All of them fell far short. Crystal Project also falls short, but it gets closer than I've seen anyone else get and does so as a solo developer using a couple of $50 royalty-free sprite packs. Explore the world, fight monsters, find crystals, and combine classes. The voxel terrain might seem like a cost-saving measure (and it probably was), but as you find more and more connections you begin to appreciate the world as a connected, "honest" space. It has its flaws--the tuning is a bit too MMO-y (i.e. putting abilities being balanced over abilities being fun to use), classes require investment to use (vs. FFV classes requiring investment to use when in another class), and I'm tired of games using "it's an MMO" as an excuse plot. It might not be FFV, but what is? 9. The Last Spell (EA):  The Last Spell is a roguelike tactical RPG where every night you use 3-6 heroes to defend your city from waves of undead. As a TRPG I think it's a huge advancement over the traditional, Final Fantasy Tactics-style "your dudes and the other dudes march towards each other and trade blows until one side runs out of dudes", which often ends up just being a slower version of a traditional JRPG. The tactical space is much deeper, as you have to balance killing enemies efficiently with covering a wide area, and there are many different ways of doing so. Longbows can cover a huge amount of the map at the expense of damage efficiency, druids can spread poison among densly packed groups, and swordfighters can move across multiple sides using momentum to fuel massive single target damage. And it's all incredibly readable, as all calculations are shown in the menu and skills/effects all have very readable icons with a common design language. The games larger flaws are on the roguelike side. Instead of going with a more standard system of upgrades (where the upgrades you pick are carried through the until the end of the run) items have levels from +0 to +5 and early game choices are quickly replaced. The equipment system also means that there's a tendancy to run out of things to upgrade and plateu, especially on the longer maps like Lakeburg and Elderlicht (Elderlicht as a whole suffers from being far longer than the game's systems are intended to support). 8. Tower Tactics Liberation (EA):  I think there are essentially two types of roguelikes, or at least a spectrum between two types. The first is the Slay the Spire type that's tightly balanced such that the player is never more than a few bad decisions away from death and there's no upgrade or synergy to escape this. In the other type the player can construct some kind of wild engine that turns the game into a parade of one-ups and flashing lights. (Vampire Survivors is similar, but I think my problem with it is that it doesn't feel like my actions are causing the flashing lights) I think of this as the "comfort food roguelike" and TTL is my current comfort food roguelike. 7. Against the Storm (EA):  The game is tagged as a "city building roguelike" but what I think it's closest to is a european-style boardgame. It's a satisfying process of building an economic engine that uses raw materials and labor in increasingly efficient ways. It's balanced such that the player running a powerful engine ends the game (via victory points) and the difficulty grows appropriately with each ascension level. 6. The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection (2022): Now my friends won't have to wonder why my designs suck despite having 100 hours in a game 5. Norco (2022): It's this year's Night In the Woods/Kentucky Route Zero/Umurangi Generation, and one of the first of a new generation that use a Disco Elysium-style text scroll. Set in the poisonous shadow of But the scene that sticks with me most is when LeBlanc visits his neighbor Duck, who is alone in his house, slowly dying of cancer.  What do we do when there aren't going to be any more good days? 4. Inscryption (2021):  Inscryption is an escape room. Inscryption is a incremental game. One where all of the verbs come from card games. It sacrifices being replayable for hundreds of hours for being a 10-hour rollercoaster of rule setup and player mastery. It is also surprisingly funny and consistently nails the timing. The caveats are: 1. There is a metaplot (everything regarding the live action segments). It is bad and doesn't get resolved. You're better off ignoring it. 2. If you think the game is ending, assume it's ending. The game ends with a lot of things unresolved and if you go in distracted by the metaplot you'll miss an otherwise good ending. 3. Pentiment (2022):  how did that work out for you socrates Goons are going to be spilling a lot of ink about this game here so I'm just going to say that the game gave me a dialog malus with the justification "Gave an annoying opinion on Pliny's Natural History" 2. Dwarf Fortress (EA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekq3TDPznGI It's hard to imagine a world without Dwarf Fortress. There might not be Infiniminer, Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio (and Satisfactory, Factory Town, and Mindustry), Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, or Amazing Cultivation Simulator. Possibly no Fortnite, although that's even more tenuous than the others. I might not be a gamer, a goon, or a computer toucher. Would similar games have happened eventually due to material circumstances? Probably. But if gaming had a legends mode Tarn Adams and his artifact would be at the top of a landslide. In 2022, Dwarf Fortress is still the best in its category. The failed first generation of "DF Clones" demonstrated that you can't compete with its pace or its 15-year head start. You can focus on one specific aspect and making a more game-y game around it (as Minecraft does with its block building or Oxygen Not Included does with its physics model), but no game simulates as much as Dwarf Fortress does. 1. Library of Ruina (2021):  I picked up Library of Ruina during the Christmas sale because two people mentioned it in the 2021 thread, finished it in February, and it's sat at #1 in my goty2022.txt since then. And I'd go so far as saying that Library of Ruina is the best JRPG* of the past 20 years. *"Is Ruina a JRPG?" is a complicated question but I'd say that I went in expecting Slay the Spire and got something more like Xenogears There isn't any "fight the boss to continue the cutscene". Cutscenes are used to set up the encounter (explaining why your opponents have chosen to risk death in the library), then the climax occurs during the gameplay which is appropriately challenging, because gaining stronger pages means killing people with stronger pages. There is typically no denouement cutscene because you've killed the people you were talking to. Much like PSX-era JRPGs there's plenty of blood and horror, although these are often campy (you fight cannibal chefs about 30 minutes in and it only gets better from there) and it never strays into cruelty or mean-spiritedness. You are expected to feel sympathy with The City's denizens (well maybe not the cannibal chefs) as most are risking death for a paycheck to avoid the certain death of not paying rent. It's not a story of saving the world but of kicking a big interconnected society and how the shockwave reverberates, where in New Weird style this interconnected society is made of mundane economic relationships in a bizarre world. It's a game where the gameplay tells the story and the climax of the story takes place in the gameplay. If a character is hyped up they will be as strong as the game suggests, being difficult to bring down (and a huge boon once you kill them and steal their clothes). In one sense there are too many mechanics, but in another these are a benefit. My favorite moment in Xenoblade 3 is when the villain, standing in the background of a scene, demonstrates what a cool anime dude he is by nonchalantly slicing machine gun bullets out of the air with his sword. In Ruina, countering bullets with your attacks isn't just a thing that happens in a cutscene (and it does happen in a cutscene, because Ruina is cool like that) but a core mechanic you can master and perform. And aesthetically it's one of the freshest games in a while, with a wide range of designs that nonetheless feel like they stem from the same world,  whether it's wolf-headed mob hitwomen  or janitors doing their jobs in their corporate swag baseball caps and standard-issue body armor with the company logo stenciled on   or elite fixers dressing for success with the suit and coat  or some hellraiser poo poo I'll admit it's not a game for everyone. It's 100 hours long, and there aren't really any "turn your brain off and chill" sections in there. The UI isn't entirely up to dealing with the game's mechanical complexity, especially the effect of statuses and passives (which get more numerous as the game goes on) on combat rolls. But there's no game that's stuck with me more this year or that has had more influence on how I think about JRPGs as a genre. 10. Crystal Project 9. The Last Spell 8. Tower Tactics Liberation 7. Against the Storm 6. The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection 5. Norco 4. Inscryption 3. Pentiment 2. Dwarf Fortress 1. Library of Ruina
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Dec 17, 2022 02:34
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What the gently caress NORCO sounds amazing and you gave the best possible reference points to ensure I play it as soon as humanly possible
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Dec 17, 2022 07:21
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Nice to see another LoR fan.
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Dec 17, 2022 07:59
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bone emulator posted:Another top 10 with DQ11! Where are all the DQ10 players at? Sheesh Time to get on the cutting edge of DQ people
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Dec 17, 2022 10:43
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Escobarbarian posted:What the gently caress NORCO sounds amazing and you gave the best possible reference points to ensure I play it as soon as humanly possible I keep hearing Norco spoken in the same breath as Disco Elysium and Kentucky Route Zero. Still haven't played it though.
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Dec 17, 2022 11:25
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Escobarbarian posted:Josh loving Sawyer, head writer of New Vegas
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Dec 17, 2022 18:06
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rope kid posted:Sorry to keep doing this, but John Gonzalez was the creative lead on F:NV. I was the director and system designer and wrote a few characters (Arcade, Hanlon, Joshua Graham, et al.). Nah its cool to give proper kudos to where its due. Plus it means you're reading our lists and how many of us enjoyed your latest game!
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Dec 17, 2022 18:17
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Yeah, I’m always happy to be told when something is inaccurate. Thanks for the correction, I’ll go back and edit now
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Dec 17, 2022 18:25
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